Refrain: Auden uses refrain at the end of each stanza as it is used in a blues song. It is used as a dejected realization that the narrator's plight and that of his fellow Jews was sad and pathetic.

Pathos: Is a method used to communicate emotions already present in the minds of the readers to appeal to them. Here, the device is used to make the readers sympathize with the sorry plight of refugees who are forced to flee their homeland to seek sanctuary in foreign countries.

Irony: Irony is placed on the fact that animals in the foreign countries like birds, fish live freely in their natural habitat and pets are treated better than the Jewish refugees who are human as everybody else, but treated worse than these animals when they are slaughtered mercilessly by Nazis.

Sarcasm: Sarcasm lies in the fact that animals are allowed to live freely without politicians depriving them the right to live and hunting them down for immediate execution. Only humans exploited and killed their fellow beings for selfish political gains.